A movie review, a rant, and other random things

I have gathered some pictures that others took of the zoo and the fort, as I lost mine. However, the picture uploader is not cooperating, and fails to load the photographs. So i will periodically attempt to upload them, I just do not have the patience to wait around for it to probably fail the upload. 

There isn't too much to blog about really, but I will start from the end of the last one. Monday evening, a group of us went to the movie theatre to see "Slumdog Millionaire". The theatre was huge, as well as the screen, and it was dirt cheap; by far the least amount of money I have spent going to see a movie, and buying popcorn. The movie itself was good and highly enjoyable. It is about two brothers who lose their mother and are forced to fend for themselves in the slums of bombay. A bunch of stuff happens, but how it is set up is that the younger brother is on the indian version of "who wants to be a millionaire" and ends up being able to answer all the questions. Not because he is smart and educated (he is a slumdog), but because little events throughout his life as a slumdog provided him with the answers to most of the questions, and the questions just so happened to pertain to events of his memory he was able to recall. Of course there is the element of love involved, where he and his brother meet this other little girl in the slums, but the younger brother becomes separated from her and the older brother, which drives him to be on the Millionaire show. 

I recommend seeing it at least once, even though it has the "cheezy" happy ending, that one of the girls in the group pointed out was improbable and the only thing about the movie that wasn't good. But I say, that the nature of a probability such as this entails that at some point the improbable must happen. Say there is a 1 out of 10 chance that two people in love get the "happy" ending, well all that entails is that 9 of those people don't get the happy ending, but 1 does. So why discount a good movie because the improbable happened? After all, the improbable must happen at some point right? Otherwise there would be a 0 out of 10 chance that the "happy" love ending would take place for a couple, and by experience we know that isn't the case. This leads me to want to explore probability theory, which I have not done yet, but I still recognize the difference between highly improbable and impossible. So one should not ascribe impossibility to a situation that is simply improbable. After all, it is improbable for a gambler to win at the craps table, given the odds, but by necessity there are those who do win at the craps table and role the improbable number, and this chance drives people to play the game. The same should and must be true for a person's attempt at securing a relationship even though the odds against it are paramount. Suffice to say the realism during the movie allows for the improbable ending to occur, and in fact not be "cheezy" in theory; even though the way it was acted out might be a little cheezy, with the whole "kiss me" line when the young man is hesitating to do so. Such cheezy acting can be overlooked for the sake of the transcendental point of what is going on. 

Some girls are watching "sex and the city" dvd's right now, and I abhor that show. It is an abomination to nature, and all things productive and intellectually or creatively stimulating. In my personal opinion, I find the show to reflect negatively upon women, and I doubt  many women will agree, which I find sad. I have met few young women who do not like the show, and I can't figure out why the number is so small. If there were a show that was only about men talking about their hook ups, and indulging in "locker room" sex gossip, I would find it demeaning and unproductive, and to reflect negatively upon me as a man. It seems apparent that the women who do love the show empathize with the characters and plots, which are severely lacking, and there is almost a sense of womanly pride amongst viewers. Ahhhhhh yes, the struggle of inner city women trying to "make it", and I suppose by "making it" we mean have a lot of sex and gathering to discuss the encounters as soon as possible. The show is almost never about the women's struggle in the workplace or the like, but it's them talking about their hook ups and indulging in "ladies room" sex gossip. Does anyone else not see the negative portrayal of womanly priority amongst young single women? I am failing to find words adequate enough to express my distain for this program. 

I have started to watch episodes of the old mtv show "Daria" with a newly acquired friend from California, as she has the episodes on her computer. I haven't seen that show in a really long time. I should have brought some family guy dvd's or something, I didn't really think about it. I can only watch the two south park episodes and one American dad episode I have on my computer so many times. 

Every morning the electricity goes off for a time, and I wake up, because the fan turns off. It also goes off randomly throughout the day. Such things are normal, and you don't even flinch, you just keep doing what you are doing and it will be back on shortly. 

Tonight we are going to eat dinner at this italian restaurant so we will see how that goes. 

Photograph disaster

So this blog is going to be less than epic, because the pictures I took of our trip to the zoo and Golconda fort were deleted. Apparently, if you accidentally drag the photos from your camera window to the camera icon, it deletes the photos you have selected. I meant to drag it to another folder, but the icon was right below the hard drive folder. So I have no pictures of my own to post of the trip, I will have to use other people's pictures. I find this very frustrating, and it makes me want to fight the nearest cow. 

However, Saturday we went to the zoo, which was fine...everything you would expect from a zoo. We did go on this safari ride thing where lions, tigers etc. were on a free range. Some tigers were really close to the vehicle. I would show you the pictures I took of it buuuuuuuuut...yeah. 

Yesterday we went to Golconda fort, which I don't know that much about suffice to say it is the ruins of a really old one. You climb steps to the top where there is a great view, I think I recall that it was built during Islamic rule. I will just have to take some other people's photos of it and post them.

On other random news, we are set to go to Madras and Pondicherry on Feb. 18th I think, where we will spend five days. I am excited for that, and now that I know that dragging the photos to the camera icon deletes them, hopefully I will retain those photos. These cities are on the east coast, so we are bound to be on some beaches; not that anyone will be scantily clad, women are usually in traditional Indian garb no matter the temperature it seems, and traditional Indian garb=a lot of cloth. But maybe, just maybe some Muslim women will show some face by temporarily removing their birka for the sake of being on the beach, sexy. And if we're lucky, some elbow and ankle...but I wont count on it. 

In thinking about it, conservative pentecostals in some ways could fit in here, when it comes to the conviction to dress modestly. As the normative notion of modesty here is in some ways more conservative than that of American conservative evangelism. At least until missionaries come and teach American conservative evangelism, then those converts start looking like American pentecostals rather than Indian pentecostals, with women in jean skirts and such. Which is odd, considering that person's standard of modesty prior was probably much more modest than the showing of her bare calves and face. It seems that in conservative evangelical missionary work, the missionaries forget that standards of modesty are culturally normative, and so while spreading the Gospel they simultaneously spread the 'merican way concerning modest appearance; at least the old fashion 'merican way. So while conservative pentecostals SHOULD feel somewhat at home with the modesty of dress you usually find in India, it would probably be foolish to think that they would, as the methods to this modesty of dress are different. 

For example, a lot of men here wear what is essentially a long skirt, there is a name but I do not know what it is. It is just a cloth wrapped around their waste, which is usually very long. So along comes the missionary, who tells the man of the gospel news. Let's say the man frequents the church and eventually becomes a "born again" member. Does this man keep wearing his chosen garb of having a cloth "dress-like" thing to cover his lower self? I really doubt it, and it probably has to do with an undertone message coming from the missionary, as he/she teaches what is "appropriate" dress and what isn't. Of course the Pentecostal-apostolic missionary will teach the staple scripture of Duet. 22:5, where a man should not wear the clothing of a woman and visa versa, and supposing that we accept this logic, it does not apply here. The man was not wearing anything that a woman in India wears, it is designated as man's apparel in this particular cultural norm. For the man to be violating the above principle he would need to be wearing a Sari or something of the like, as that is specifically female apparel. Though, as the 'merican missionary sees this man in his "skirt-like" apparel, it just wouldn't seem right in the missionary's cultural conviction of what is appropriate for a man and woman to wear, and I doubt that the missionary would accept this man's apparel as appropriate in the long run; as I have never seen an Indian pentecostal-apostolic wearing such apparel. No, they look very "proper" and western. Hence the reason why missionary work is at times not looked upon too kindly, as there seems to be difficulty in separating the spreading of the religion from the spreading of the culture from which it originates, or is that even possible? 

Suffice to say, there will probably not be the immodesty on the beaches of India that you see on the beaches of America; such immodesty in apparel and actions are reserved for Bollywood movies and/or billboards and advertisements. I have been in India for about 1 month, and I have seen one female thigh lol, which is very scandilous and only seen in places where westerners would be, which was in this really nice hotel. The moral of this story is, if you want hot Indian cleavage, leg, or rear...watch bollywood movies; such dress is considered to be extremely inappropriate in public settings, at least in the places I have been thus far, places like bombay could very well be different as it is a much more western kind of city. 

Also, Dr. Pappu is going to nominate for this scholarship designated for philosophy students. He said he got the email asking professors for nominations, and he asked me where I stand as a Philosophy major. As I have received A's in all of my philosophy courses, he will nominate me for the scholarship, then whoever is directing the scholarship will get in touch with the nominees. So far, this is all I know about it. It would be pretty sweet if I could score another scholarship for next year, especially one designed for philosophers, (can I call myself a philosopher yet? At what point can one do that?). 

So in light of the photo disaster, I will gather photos from other people, and then post them later. 

McDonald's, a field trip, and more monkeys

So there were a few things worth mentioning about this weekend. First of all, yesterday we went shopping for some things, and in the process we ate at McDonald's. Obviously, the menu is different, as almost no one eats beef here. So they have things like the CHICKEN MAHARAJA MAC, or the McVEG; I got a maharaja mac, it was pretty good. It was like a big mac, only with spiced chicken patties, and a tomato, everything else was as a normal big mac would be. The fries taste totally the same, I meant to save my Maharaja Mac paper but threw it away when I left, I'm sure we'll eat McDonald's again at some point. 

It appears as if I will be going to this Inaugural Ball for students abroad on Tuesday night, as most of the SIP (Students in India Program) students are going though not many of the Miami students, and I was told that I "should" go for some reason. So I figure why not, it's a reason to dress up, there will be food and what not, and I can tell a story about how when Obama became president, I was at an inaugural ball for it in Hyderabad, India. So when we were shopping, I picked up a nice shirt to wear with the input of Liz Gerret, as I feel that buying clothes is a commitment, and I needed a nice shirt to go with my black pants with tiny grey pin stripes. So I went with a solid light grey, which worked out. I thought about a tie, but the only good ties I could find were pretty expensive, so unless someone has one I could borrow, the shirt looks nice enough without the tie; I just need to figure out a way to iron it. So this should be interesting, people are referring to it as "SIP Prom", because I loved prom....no, but this has a totally different dynamic to it that I exposited above, we'll see what goes down.

Today, the Miami group went to the film city theme park for Telugu films, sometimes called Tollywood. Most are familiar with Bollywood, which are films in Hindi from Bombay, hence the satire of Hollywood. It was kind of odd, it was like Universal Studios times -3, but for a developing country like India, it's an ideal place to spend a day with the family. They had some rides, a look into how movies are made sort of thing, some gardens, a tour of scenes that had been used to shoot films, etc. Of course none of us have scene any of these Telugu films, so it was not so exciting for us. 

All in all it was kind of a bizzare place, but the topper, was the wild west stunt show; now think about this, a wild west stunt show, in the middle of India...I mean we almost had to. We learned a lot, for example, did you know that in the wild west everyone fought fought ninja style? Or that you would give one man 5 consecutive round house kicks to the face, only to have your opponent get back up unphased? Or that with every shoot out, they fought to odd Sci Fi sound effects layered over saloon music of a different key? Oh yes, it was very entertaining, but I give them props.

My favorite thing of the film city, the monkeys! These would get closer to you, they would rummage through trash and get food, and when you would approach them they would feel threatened and charge at you to get you to stand down, it's actually kind of terrifying to have a monkey charge at you, and very hilarious, because it's so small, and you just freak out and run away to avoid getting a monkey to the face. They are really fun to watch, they are like little fury people, by far the coolest animal in the area. So I posted some photos I took, I didn't take a lot

People are still asking to get photos with us, it's actually getting kind of irritating. I think I am actually empathizing with real celebrities that get angry at photographers, or even getting hounded all the time to get pictures. Now I am noticing people take pictures of us from a distance, as opposed to those who ask to get one with us; they just bust out a camera phone and point it in our direction. When we got to the park some guy wanted a picture with me as we were shaking hands...like a presidential handshake or something, it's just odd. The next time I see an Indian family out and about in Cinci I might run up to them and ask them "which country are you from?" and "can we get a picture...?", to see if they get the joke.

Another irritating thing, is that there is no concept of a waiting line. You might be waiting to buy something until the worker is done with that customer in front of you, and as soon as they wrap up their interaction someone just pushes you aside. This pretty much happens in any waiting line, for some reason the revelation that things work much faster and with much more ease when they are done with order and organization has not occurred yet. So you have to learn just to push people out of your way. The worst is when there actually is a line formed and people think it's okay to just skip the whole line, I can't conceive of any cultural mindset that would consider that to be fine; as there is nothing special about any of us, and no reason why any one person should skip a line as opposed to another. Then other people think they should do it, and soon there is no line, even when an official says to form a single line, it just doesn't matter. So you just push your own way to the front. 

We sometimes refer to Dr. Pappu as Papps now, only to each other. I think that Mr. and Mrs. Pappu are officially our Indian grandparents at this point. Especially Mrs. Pappu, as she has a very grandmotherly command about her. If you combined both of my grandmothers, and then made this hybrid-grandmother Indian, you would get Mrs. Pappu for sure.

It was a hot day, and I am tired, and feel dirty, and will do some Hindi work tonight and in the morning. There is a quiz tomorrow, over the alphabet and not sure about vocabulary, but either way I think I am prepared enough. 

Also, is it weird that I like to read my own blog?

The Market

We went to this market place today, where there was a lot of kite flying for a holiday. It was cool, they had a lot of stuff you could buy, and I will probably return at some point to buy things before I leave. 

There were a lot of beggar children outside of the entrance though, and they were kind of aggressive in their begging style. They would touch you to get your attention, never makes for a comfortable situation when you have cash out trying to group pay the rickshaw driver. When we left we decided to get some pizza hut, and the rickshaw drivers ripped us off. We thought it would be farther than it was, but it was only around the corner, and the group agreed to 100 rupees per rickshaw, split by four people. So when we weren't going to pay that amount for going that far, they pouted about it, and this kid just paid it because he was already ticked off by the beggar children ripping his kite. You have to watch getting ripped off. The pizza was good though.

I also managed to do some laundry, always a good thing. There were some odd things at the market though, like this guy performing tricks with a cow, letting it step on him and bite his neck to make money as a street performance; I did not give them money. There was also this giant of a man that let you take pictures with him for a donated fee, whatever you wanted to give him for it. He was huge. I also tried to take a picture in the rickshaw to give a perspective of the experience of riding in one, as you can see. 

I also forgot to mention a local nocturnal animal that is kind of interesting, really huge bats. Within the first couple of nights I noticed some flying things in the nights and evenings. At first I didn't question what they were, and just assumed they were black birds of some sort, like the crows you would see in the day time as well. Not until I watched one swoop into the tree and dangle upside down, did I realize they were really huge bats. Kind of cool I suppose, it reminds me of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, when Dr. Jones and the hot blonde woman crash land in Indian and float to this village, where they then take a hike some place, and the hot blonde woman looks up and says 

"Look at all those birds..." 

and Dr. Jones says "those aren't birds...those a vampire bats...". 

Of course I am paraphrasing, I have not seen that movie for a long time, but I was reminded. They also are not really vampire bats, these eat fruit and insects I believe. I think actual blood feeding bats are found in the South American region, not really sure. 

Hindi lesson

So I just ran into a local student I met a couple of days ago, and tried out my Hindi on him, he said it was good! So here is a hindi lesson for you, in transliteration of course.

1. hello=namaste

-the a's are pronounced like the 'a' in Father, and the 'e' like 'ay', and short.

2. My name is (insert name here)= Mera naam (your name) hai.

3. What is your name?= aapkaa naam kya hai?

Mera=my

naam=name

hai=is

aapkaa=your

kya=what

The sentence structure is of course different, where the verb is on the end. So "My name is Joshua" would be "my name Joshua is". With the script of course, this would look totally different, it's only the transliteration to show the pronunciation.

So I guess I can practice speaking with this guy, who happens to be Mormon converted from methodist due to Mormon missionaries, perhaps we can have some religious discussions as well.

The Group

Here are some pictures of the group, most of them are Miami students, there are a few that are not. Of course, in the first photo there are some university faculty. You will find me camping out in the back of every group picture. I also realized I wore the same shirt on both of our little outings, completely unintentional, I need to do laundry but there are only two machines, and they are always being used when I try to do laundry.

On our trip to the Buddhist monuments, waiting for the boat, I apparently made some friends. You have to get used to this in India, if you come here, and you are white, you are some what of a quasi-celebrity. It doesn't come with any really great perks, like offers of free stuff because you are awesome, in fact you may get charged more because you are a "rich american". However, you will frequently be greeted by strangers wanting to try out their English, and get a picture with a white guy (or girl), and sometimes, get an autograph. 

 

Random News

So it's the start of the first "real" week of classes, and my schedule is set. It is how I previously stated after the slight change, and it looks to be a good schedule. There isn't much to report, I just feel like posting a blog, so here are some slightly insignificant developments.

1. I downloaded Death Cab For Cutie's latest album off itunes, Narrow Stairs, even though it is overdue. I enjoy it, it has all the aesthetic appeal you would expect from a Death Cab album, and it is good "study" music.

2. Two nights ago I was sleeping, and I woke up to someone knocking on my door. so I answer and two of the other non-miami students are outside as one says "Josh, we have reason to believe that a giant rat has ran into your room, because jaimee woke up to it perched on his neck, and we chased it out and it ran under your door." Naturally, I was shocked, so I responded with a typical "josh hamm is shocked" response and said...."hmmmm, okayyyyy". so put some pants on and the other guy gets a pole and we locate it under my bed, he prods it with the pole and we get it out of my room. They corner it in a bathroom stall, and I leave them to do the capturing and go back to bed. It was really big...hopefully I do not wake up to one perched on my body.

3. I talked to my independent study professor, Dr. Prasad, briefly about the direction I want to go with the Vedanta study, or what I am interested in or how I am interested in looking at it. 

-We could do some reading of the principle texts, the Brahma Sutras, and sort of retrospectively look at the issues involved in the three different schools of thought, 

-we could focus on issues raised in the philosophies and commentaries on the brahma sutras, which make up the different schools of thought and their approach to metaphysical/epistemological issues

-or we took take a comparative approach to the study. I expressed my interest in phenomenology and consciousness, and he brought up the idea of doing a comparative study of Edmund Husserl (thinker/founder of phenomenology) with Shankara, the sage responsible for the Advaita school of vedanta, who differ on how they see consciousness.

So I am not sure what will go down, we will see. I am not sure I want to do a very narrow comparison of these two thinkers at this point, or if I adequately can. I have not read Husserl's actual writings yet, so I would have his readings, as well as vedanta readings, it might be a bit much. We will see what happens.

4. I am also somewhat concerned about the voltage from these outlets to my computer, it might be on the verge of being too much, but not "too" much. Some people have reported their computer doing weird things, the only thing weird my computer has done is the speakers stopped working, so I have to use headphones, and the battery doesn't seem to last too long. hmmmmmmmm, I wonder if i need a converter that converts voltage as well, even though the girl at radio shack (who I think was quasi-flirting with me), said that I wouldn't need to convert voltage. Time will tell....?

Nagarjuna dam

Below are some pics taken from our trip to the site where the patriarch of Buddhism, Nagarjuna, founder of the Madhyamaka school of Mahayana Buddhism once lived. We took a boat to the island and walked around, it was pretty cool. Below are some pictures taken during the trip, in this blog and the previous one. 

Also, I found a new wild animal roaming around, wild peacocks. Below is one flying of the little lake on campus.

The Streets

Here are some random pictures of the streets, I had a few more, but the photo uploader on here doesn't always cooperate. As I said before the streets are crazy, I'm not sure what driver's ed is like in India, or if it even exists, but if it does I think it can be summed up in a single word, SURVIVE. 

Several of us have commented on an idea for the next Grand Theft Auto game, where you start off as a boy from the country who came to the city to work for an uncle driving auto-rickshaws, and of course you get involved in some shady business going down on the streets. You slowly work your way up the shady business ladder until you rule the majority of the Bollywood industry, and have a banging hot bollywood actress as your wife. 

Of course this would involve all the typical GTA things you find in the games, stealing cars off the street and taking off, punching/assaulting random people. Only you need about 3 times the amount of vehicles, and and 5 times the amount of motorcycles you normally find in a game. The title of this award-winning video game,

GRAND THEFT AUTO: Streets of Bombay

So I haven't been on a bike in years, many years, and now we have bikes to ride to classes. I can't decide if I just want to walk to bike, I have biked for the last few days, and my legs might fall off. On the other hand, walking takes longer, hmmmmmm. Nevertheless, it seems you you really don't forget how to ride a bike, because "it's like riding a bike".

I think that I have a set schedule now, pretty much, there are many things to work around because the class schedules are really odd, and they changed like twice. Also, I have to deal with the contrast between miami's rigidness and India's lack of structure, which is difficult as I have to make sure I get done what I need to get done here for Miami, and the lack of structure here does not help that. So there have been some adjustments to my classes, which are as follows:

-Basic Hindi

-Gandhian Philosophy

-Law and society of colonial India (I think)

-Independent study in Vedanta: along side the regular course of Indian philosophy

I have not looked into the Law and society yet, I will later today, hopefully that works out, and it's still being offered etc. Because tomorrow is actually some kind of Muslim holiday, and we are supposed to take a trip some where for the long weekend before classes "really" start. I find this process of sampling courses and such to be a pain, it would be much easier if you just set the courses that are being offered so that we can judge accordingly. We'll see what happens...

Okay, so classes start tomorrow, but none of us really know where we are going. I think most of mine are in the humanities building, but what rooms I do not know. As I said before, you have to go with the flow. 

I find myself getting tired a lot, perhaps it is the sun along with the malaria meds that cause sun sensitivity lol. I also find that I do not have much of an appetite, not because I am sick though. Perhaps it is the regimented meals, where as I never had a regimented meal schedule at home. So after I eat breakfast, then lunch comes, I am not hungry, but I will still eat because I would not eat again until dinner, and so on. So my plan is to simply eat less with each meal, which wont be a problem as I don't have much of an appetite anyhow. Thankfully I took some last minute advice and packed some peanut butter ;). The food itself is pretty good and has quality, but it's a lot of the same indian food EVERY meal. So sometime I might be ordering a pizza from the pizza hut near by, which sounds very, very good right now. 

I am looking forward to my philosophy classes though, we talked briefly with one of the professors, Dr. Prasad who will be teaching Indian philosophy. So hopefully we will figure out where we are supposed to go lol. 

The Charminar

Yesterday we went with Dr. Pappu and Mrs. Pappu, as well as Dr. Keitges who has something to do with our program from Miami, though I am not sure what exactly his role is, aside from talking a lot. We visited two places, a monument called The Charminar which you can go up into, and a Hindu temple. You can't take photos in the temple, so I do not have many of it. Below are some pictures of The Charminar monument.

Monkeys

So there are wild monkeys that roam the campus, which is pretty cool, above is an example of one such monkey. You may also find roaming cattle (of course), lizards, and supposedly there are all kinds of different snakes on the campus ground, none of which I have seen. The monkeys are by far the coolest though. 

Housing

The Tagore International House

The room that I stay in.

Taken from the balcony of our building, this building is a lot like ours.

Alright, so I did make it hear alright. But i have not been able to blog because they have not yet set up our connections in the rooms, so to connect we must walk to the library, which is not a short walk. So I will make a quick blog.

My first flight was not bad, we were in Chicago in no time. We waited for about 7 hours there for our Air India flight, which was also fine. They fed us a lot it seemed. We landed in Germany so they could change crew and clean, then we boarded again and flew to Mumbai. Needless to say it was long, and slightly uncomfortable after a while. We landed in Mumbai to change plans for Hyderabad, and by the time I got off I missed the shuttle to the terminals that the other were on. So I had to catch the next one and find them, interesting. The air in Mumbai is smoggy, and polluted, so there was a distinct smell to it that you notice right away. The airport itself though, wow...worst experience so far. It was absolutely crazy and disorganized, they just assumed that people knew what to do, and people would shove to get through security and such, it was nuts! But after that fiasco we flew to Hyderabad, the airport of which was very pleasant and organized. 

They did however, lose some of our luggage. Several people (including me) did not have their two luggage bags until yesterday, which was a pain. So I had two changes of clothes to work with. We have it now though, so that is good. 

Obviously, culture shock was something to deal with. I hope I would not need to emphasize that it is totally different here, but it is. It takes some getting used to, mentally and physically. I got sick one night but other than that it have felt fine, and after jet lag is over, which I think it is now, things get settled. Though you get stared at a lot, which also takes some getting used to. It is also very "go with the flow" here, you should come to India with expectation lol.

The driving is an experience of its own. There are painted lines, but there might as well not be, they are not observed. People just honk as they go by, or pass through an intersection, yet there are not wrecks, it's amazing. so organization is not something you will find in very many places here it seems. 

So hopefully we will get connection soon so I can do better "blogging"...